Who is After the rains intended for?

One of the motivations when launching After the Rains was our partial disappointment in seeing how during the psychedelic renaissance that has taken place in recent years, the use of these substances has been slowly assimilated only into the therapeutic mode with psychedelic-assisted therapies.

But, what about everyone else who wants to learn how to benefit from said substances but doesn’t suffer from any disorder? Will these people still have to access these substances illegally and take them, without any safety measures and by themselves? Or is there any way in which we can grow together from the experience of sharing psychedelics, creating rituals, crafting something and supporting each other along the path?

If you are a newbie, you might be flooded with information: weird plant names, chemical compounds, doses, combinations, extraction methods, therapies, gurus that tell you to trust blindly and a lot of woo woo stuff that sounds unfamiliar to say the least.

Well, calm down, most of the woo woo stuff will make sense as soon as you’ve had your first psychedelic experience, but for the rest, at some point you will have to make a decision about how to go about it. There are a few approaches:

-The geek:  cultivates his mushrooms at home and takes them without telling anybody

(might end up staring at the carpet all night in a state of dread or bliss) and that is as far as the experience goes.

-The cool lads: they gather all their friends to go to the mountains and take psychedelics along with beers, weed and food

(they might end up lost somewhere in the middle of a forest or not feeling anything at all)

-The I wanna change my life and money is not a problem: they are going to spend as much as possible because that gives them a sense of safety

(will spend up to 2000€ to take mushrooms and fast in a fancy hut in Hawaii and come back home without really knowing how to root that experience in everyday life).

We know them all, and we don’t judge any way to go about it as long as you keep yourself and others safe.

What we offer, though, is a mixture of those three, because we see the benefits to them all: the first profile is bold and independent but, in spite of the risks, they would not want to alter their consciousness with other people around, for fear of losing control and making a fool of themselves. However, tripping is in fact like travelling, it is great to do it by yourself but the experience is mostly of all about what you share on the road.

The second one feels safe with their peers but does not realise the importance of set and setting and how much there is the need to craft a container that puts everybody in a similar mental state. A retreat puts everyone in conjunction to do inner work, that is why everyone is there.

The third is willing to open up but from the safety of a high-end consumer experience that expects the organisation to do all the work for them and won’t have the opportunity to make lasting bonds. That is the reason why we cook together, because we think it is a great way to show the group that we cooperate in doing the basics, that we are all at the same level and we can do great things when we get together, a feeling that we don’t tend to have much in industrialised societies.

There are so many approaches that sometimes I see no need in our existence but then I realise that there is a need for everyone to be educated and empowered in their particular approach. As a way to fight the dogmatism of religions and spirituality that has disconnected us from the source and as a way to strike a balance between power and humility. How are we supposed to do this it by ourselves?

The psychedelic experience is worth sharing.

Don’t misunderstand us, it is essential that the potential of these substances keeps being investigated and standardised in specific therapies by the scientific community. However, we want to leave it to each individual to decide how far they want to explore consciousness on this inherently therapeutic journey.